Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which
Speaker 2: is a weekly podcast, a twice weekly podcast. I don't
Speaker 2: know how it's a podcast, And I'm your host, Maria Kiljoy,
Speaker 2: and we talked about cool people who Did Cool Stuff
Speaker 2: on the podcast that's named that. But my guest is
Speaker 2: Chelsea Weber Smith, who's host of a different podcast, American Hysteria.
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm doing so good and I'm just so excited to
Speaker 3: be here and hear whatever you got for me today.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's always fun because people, I think know that
Speaker 2: I don't tell people what they're gonna learn about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a complete mystery, so thrilling. I am on
Speaker 3: the edge of my seat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whereas everyone who's listening already knows what it's about
Speaker 2: because it was in the title. They really have one
Speaker 2: up on you. Although actually the title of this one
Speaker 2: isn't going to mean anything to anyone. But Sophie is
Speaker 2: our producer.
Speaker 1: Hi, Sophie, Hi, that's what we call a podcast flex.
Speaker 1: You're like, ooh, you want to know the topic?
Speaker 3: Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 1: Hi, Chelsea. I'm so happy to have this combination of
Speaker 1: humans on one pod. Does feel good.
Speaker 3: I'm honored.
Speaker 2: Our audio engineer is Ian and our the music was
Speaker 2: written for us by unwoman. Hi, Unwoman. So, Chelsea, have
Speaker 2: you ever heard of the Dill Pickle Club?
Speaker 3: No, but I couldn't be happier to find out what
Speaker 3: that is.
Speaker 1: I love a dill pickle great.
Speaker 3: Probably being a club, I mean, no, I don't like
Speaker 3: love it that much, but I would learn about a
Speaker 3: club that still pickles.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay. There was a club in Chicago in the
Speaker 2: nineteen tens and nineteen twenties up until nineteen thirty three
Speaker 2: that changed so much about culture in the city and
Speaker 2: therefore the country. And it was founded and run by
Speaker 2: a bunch of revolutionaries and the main guy who ran
Speaker 2: it was a syndicalist bomber. Okay, all right, so much
Speaker 2: culture comes from it. Okay, perfect, This is the kind
Speaker 2: of shit I love. Yep, Yeah, cool, Yeah, I thought
Speaker 2: that this was. The guest doesn't know what we pick,
Speaker 2: but I try to pick something that will work for
Speaker 2: the guest.
Speaker 3: You did a great job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, So we're going to back up first. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna talk about hoboes. I'm not going to ask
Speaker 2: if you know anything about hoboes. I'm going to talk
Speaker 2: about hoboes.
Speaker 3: Maybe you know about hobos, Yeah, I know a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, Well this story will start where all
Speaker 2: good stories start with hobos. I am not using that
Speaker 2: word pejoratively. Some people do these days use it pejoratively.
Speaker 2: I absolutely am not. Have you ever heard of the
Speaker 2: distinction between hoboes, tramps, and bums.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have, and I'm not entirely sure I would
Speaker 3: be able to make the distinction. But let's see, is
Speaker 3: a hobo someone who is by choice traveling.
Speaker 2: That's part of it, but that's not the thing that
Speaker 2: makes it right.
Speaker 3: You tell me, you tell me, okay.
Speaker 2: I actually I first learned this when I was a
Speaker 2: streak kid and a train hopper, until I was hanging
Speaker 2: out with hobos and tramps and bums. So there's a
Speaker 2: hobo travels and is willing to work. And these definitions
Speaker 2: go back at least as far back as the nineteen
Speaker 2: twenties and probably way before then. So a hobo travels
Speaker 2: and is willing to work. A tramp travels and avoids
Speaker 2: work if possible, does like just does enough work to
Speaker 2: not die, you know, right, And a bum neither travels
Speaker 2: nor works, and none of these were necessarily pejoratives, although
Speaker 2: people in one category might look down on the others,
Speaker 2: and both hoboes and tramps probably look down on each other,
Speaker 2: and everyone looked down on bums and.
Speaker 3: Right, you know as it goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's the sort of self importance hierarchy with
Speaker 2: whatever you are is at the top.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I was a tramp probably in several senses of that
Speaker 2: word in my early twenties.
Speaker 3: I did have a pretty long hitchhike in career during
Speaker 3: the summer. Yeah, so I wasn't quite I did hop
Speaker 3: one train. I wasn't like in the community in the world,
Speaker 3: but I do have at least some uh some of
Speaker 3: that in my in my past.
Speaker 2: Where's you okay? Now, everyone in the earth you want
Speaker 2: to do that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: No, no, everyone who everyone who's hop trains talks about
Speaker 2: like where they hopped trains to and from and it
Speaker 2: only matters to other people trains. But where did you
Speaker 2: have trains to it?
Speaker 3: From Brattleborough? I want a very cool little city, uh
Speaker 3: out to New Hampshire. I think it's is it white city?
Speaker 3: It's white something? But yeah, it was just like an
Speaker 3: one overnight yeah, box car opened to the sky absolutely
Speaker 3: like a truly, you know, beautiful experience. But it was
Speaker 3: just like my one little tourist ye, and I can't
Speaker 3: say anything other than that, but it was a really
Speaker 3: cool experience. And then yeah, hitchhiking a lot more.
Speaker 2: But yeah, mine is similar. I've successfully hopped trains three times.
Speaker 2: I spent a lot more time than that trying to
Speaker 2: hop trains, and I've hitchhiked.
Speaker 3: A lot, kicking it in the train yard. Yeah it's real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, so no, I'm really excited. You're definitely the
Speaker 2: right person to the one.
Speaker 1: Okay, cool, Okay.
Speaker 2: My grandfather was a hobo. He grew up poor in
Speaker 2: the Midwest, and he left to go ride freight trains
Speaker 2: and find work where he could in the Great Depression
Speaker 2: before he wound up in the Navy in World War Two.
Speaker 2: And so we've talked a little bit about the radical
Speaker 2: history of hoboes and tramps on this show. Before one
Speaker 2: week we talked about the industrial workers of the world
Speaker 2: and their free speech fights where they mobilized the transient
Speaker 2: workforce of the country during the first couple decades of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century. And these were like free speech fights
Speaker 2: basically like they'd go be organizers, and then the government
Speaker 2: and be like, now you can't soapbox, you can't organize,
Speaker 2: and so then they would like fill the with hobos
Speaker 2: who would get up and you know, talk on a
Speaker 2: soapbox and get arrested and they'd fill the jails, and
Speaker 2: I don't know, it was cool. That's not what this
Speaker 2: episode's about. Weird, even an episode about that. No one
Speaker 2: knows the etymology of hobo, which is really I love
Speaker 2: this shit. I love when there's an unknownnology.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's a couple versions, and I'll say the version
Speaker 2: that I think is most likely. But first there's there's
Speaker 2: one that's like it might stand for ho boy because
Speaker 2: they were farm hands and the used hose. It might
Speaker 2: have been railroads slang for homeward bound. I actually think
Speaker 2: that one has some it rings a little bit true,
Speaker 2: this kind of shit that fucking train riders love doing this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: The most convincing etymology to me is that it's short
Speaker 2: for homeless bohemian Okay, yeah, bohemian being I've always really
Speaker 2: hated this word, but it's going to be such an
Speaker 2: important part of what we're talking about today. Bohemian being
Speaker 2: a sort of old fashion but very long lived slang
Speaker 2: for a countercultural person. Right, And I've hated it because
Speaker 2: it's a Western European thing and it descends from the
Speaker 2: exoticization of Romani folks, and Bohemia is a specific place.
Speaker 2: It's a precursor of the Czech Republic, but it's specifically
Speaker 2: like not even oh, you're from the Czech Republic, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're acting like a Romani person, you're traveling blah blah blah,
Speaker 2: blah blah. All these literary types in France early eight
Speaker 2: nineteenth century were like, Wow, we're just like the Romani
Speaker 2: people because we live outside of society. We're bohemians.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hipsters exist in all times and cultures.
Speaker 2: Yes, why can't they just use that word, which I
Speaker 2: use is a pejorative.
Speaker 3: Fixed it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, So Hobo's most famously traveled by writing freight trains,
Speaker 2: which is a crime, and it is a dangerous crime,
Speaker 2: and anyone who's listening, I cannot in good conscience tell
Speaker 2: you to do it unless you are taught by someone
Speaker 2: with more experience. If you want the like train riding
Speaker 2: tourist experience, which is a lovely one. Go with someone
Speaker 2: who knows what they're doing.
Speaker 3: And that's what I did. So I acted responsibly, excellent
Speaker 3: as much as one could. Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 2: The fact that you described successfully riding a train, I
Speaker 2: was assumed you had gone with someone.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, different time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then people just sit around and be like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's a forty eight and out of fifty three, and
Speaker 2: they like, you know, oh that's a grainer and that's
Speaker 2: a goggle. And my brain was like, oh, you weren't
Speaker 2: in a box car, you were't a gondolet was open
Speaker 2: to the sky. And I'm like, fuck, I love that.
Speaker 3: I love that trainhead, you know, I know a grainer,
Speaker 3: Like I know that you get in.
Speaker 1: That little hole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to get that little hole. I had such a
Speaker 3: like cartoon initially, beauty. It was just you know, like stars,
Speaker 3: you couldn't see anything. You got into town and you
Speaker 3: just like the blue sky, you know. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: way too idyllic, what I deserve?
Speaker 2: Yeah, people die doing this all.
Speaker 3: No, it's not That's what I'm saying. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: not not a typical experience probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this tradition of riding trains and having fun
Speaker 2: and dying goes back to the beginning of trains. As
Speaker 2: soon as there was like, oh, here's a big thing
Speaker 2: that no one's watching that goes from one place to
Speaker 2: the other, people were like sick. That sounds like a
Speaker 2: way to not pay. Yeah, you know, in the late
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties, after the Civil War, you get the beginning
Speaker 2: of hobo culture. Returning veterans became the first hobos. They
Speaker 2: wandered the country and they would drift out west looking
Speaker 2: for work, and it became a real big thing around
Speaker 2: the turn of the century, and then it peaked during
Speaker 2: the Great Depression, and it slacked off since then, but
Speaker 2: it never quite went away. Like returning Vietnam veterans kind
Speaker 2: of gave it new life. Crusty anarchists at the turn
Speaker 2: of the next century gave it new life. And like
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff we talk about of all these
Speaker 2: like mythologized radicals, we're like, we're gonna talk about all
Speaker 2: these radicals from a hundred hundred fifty year ago, and
Speaker 2: we're talking about hoboculture.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The people who deserve the amazing reputation of like being
Speaker 2: these like wandering hard workers with their own beautiful culture
Speaker 2: are the current immigrant migrant workers who fight against depression.
Speaker 2: But they're not white, so white people try to avoid
Speaker 2: thinking about them so they don't get romanticized. And I
Speaker 2: don't know, romanticization's messy, but yeah, I just want to
Speaker 2: shout that out about who the real the people still
Speaker 2: kind of came. Yeah, okay, hobos. There's only one labor
Speaker 2: union with the teeth and the grit to organize hoboes,
Speaker 2: and that was Friends of the Pod the Industrial Workers
Speaker 2: of the World, and they started. We've talked about them
Speaker 2: a bunch of times. I didn't write down what year
Speaker 2: they started this time, I think is nineteen oh five.
Speaker 2: And basically they started when a bunch of people were like, hey,
Speaker 2: socialists and anarchists, let's get over our differences, organize all
Speaker 2: workers of the world together. All the while we will
Speaker 2: actively fight against the racism, nativism, and sexism that the
Speaker 2: labor movement has way too much of in the United States,
Speaker 2: and then we'll overthrow capitalism and make all of our
Speaker 2: lives beautiful.
Speaker 3: Right, And will you tell me again what year we're
Speaker 3: in ish?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, okay, so this started nineteen oh five? Is
Speaker 2: this year?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 2: And yeah? And this union was founded by repeated friends
Speaker 2: of the pod, like the born enslaved black anarchist Lucy
Speaker 2: Parsons and the Irish goth socialist Mother Jones. People get
Speaker 2: people have messaged me being like Mother Jones is a
Speaker 2: goth a and I'm like, she literally wore black morning
Speaker 2: dresses all the time. I don't fucking know what you want.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, what else is there? Yeah?
Speaker 2: When I talk about we've always been here about like
Speaker 2: queer people, I also am just going to go ahead
Speaker 2: and say we've always been here about goths.
Speaker 3: One of the like like great archetypes of psychology is
Speaker 3: the so yeah, the person.
Speaker 2: Is us with death but not necessarily depressed or not
Speaker 2: any more likely to be depressed than anyone else in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a different kind of saint, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know I was founded by these two.
Speaker 2: I'm sure some men were involved too, but they get
Speaker 2: enough of books of their own. Although I will say
Speaker 2: several of our heroes this week are men, which is
Speaker 2: very progressive of me to include men in the show.
Speaker 2: So free, but don't worry. Two thirds of the men,
Speaker 2: there's like three core men that we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about today, two thirds of them are mostly only famous
Speaker 2: for being attached to their way more famous girlfriends. Cool,
Speaker 2: and so it's like, well, what do the boys get
Speaker 2: up to while the girls are out organizing revolution?
Speaker 3: Yeah? What are they doing at their little topperware parties? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Through some cultural stuff. They start at a club, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are going to start with the most complicated one. Sophie.
Speaker 2: You're going to notice that this is the first time
Speaker 2: this has happened on the show. Where I get excited
Speaker 2: about this some guy and I start writing about him.
Speaker 2: In about halfway through, I realized he was not necessarily
Speaker 2: Oh good dad.
Speaker 3: Did we not?
Speaker 1: Did we not follow the Sophie rules of reading about men?
Speaker 1: Which is a scroll to the end so you find
Speaker 1: out if they.
Speaker 3: Go to the controversy section of Wikipedia, Yeah, to go.
Speaker 1: To the ashtrik session where you find out that they're
Speaker 1: a woman abuser?
Speaker 4: Did we?
Speaker 1: Did we not listen to my to Sophie's rule of
Speaker 1: reading about men?
Speaker 2: So, okay, what's funny about this guy? Almost everything written
Speaker 2: about him, that's true, But almost everything written about him
Speaker 2: was written by the women in his life because they're
Speaker 2: all more famous than him, right, And so he's actually
Speaker 2: I'll just I'll just talk about him and we can
Speaker 2: we can sit in moral judgment. I enjoy sitting in
Speaker 2: a moral judgment of historical character. This is one of
Speaker 2: my favorite pastimes. But this one's like, I'll be curious
Speaker 2: what you all thing? Okay, so, uh you ever heard
Speaker 2: of Emma Goldman? Yes, okay, this is Emma Goldman's boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, she had many, Yeah I know, this one
Speaker 2: actually was like the main love of her life and
Speaker 2: is not the assassin guy who's the main one people,
Speaker 2: he's the artist. He is the doctor.
Speaker 3: Okay. Didn't she have like an artist.
Speaker 1: Sma Goldman?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, no, like okay, so lover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, We're gonna start with a guy named Ben rightman,
Speaker 2: he's mostly known for dating. That's true. I mean, actually,
Speaker 2: I don't know what.
Speaker 1: It could be, right right man, I'm sorry, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll say I'm just waiting for you to tell me
Speaker 1: what bullshit this man did.
Speaker 2: This man is the horniest man I've ever had on
Speaker 2: this I've ever talked about on this show. In ways, I.
Speaker 3: Didn't have a rasputant episode yet.
Speaker 1: He might have out walked around dispute. It's impossible.
Speaker 2: This man was kind of a fuck boy, but actually
Speaker 2: mostly a good person and the main thing he failed
Speaker 2: as he was a shit father. But the main book
Speaker 2: written about him was written by one of his daughters
Speaker 2: and is like about his complicated relationships with women, and
Speaker 2: actually kind of is like, well, you know, all right,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like it's a doesn't like give him
Speaker 2: a pass, but it's like it's not as Okay, I'll
Speaker 2: just keep going, I'll just keep talking about him.
Speaker 3: She puts a whole like a context around Yeah, maybe
Speaker 3: his actions well, and.
Speaker 2: Most of his actions aren't wrong even though they like
Speaker 2: because they're all consensual with adults who are also into
Speaker 2: free love.
Speaker 3: Okay, gets complicated. Yeah, I know, I know, even today,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Ben Reitman was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I almost
Speaker 2: sid same Paul Minneapolis, but it's a different place to
Speaker 2: poor Russian Jewish immigrants. In eighteen seventy nine, when he
Speaker 2: was one, his dad ran out on the family. Later
Speaker 2: he was like, ah, that's where I learned it from. Whatever,
Speaker 2: fuck you. His mom moved to the Red Light district
Speaker 2: of Chicago. Almost every version of this voids mentioning that
Speaker 2: his mother was a sex worker. And he grew up
Speaker 2: in a brothel and he was now eventually he's famous
Speaker 2: for two things. He's famous for one being called the
Speaker 2: Hobo Doctor because he was both hobo and a doctor,
Speaker 2: so it's a pretty legit and he's not fake in
Speaker 2: either of them. Two, he was Emma Goldman's partner for
Speaker 2: a long time. Emma Goldman has woven her way through
Speaker 2: a fuck ton of our episodes, but we talked about
Speaker 2: the most in our episode about birth control pioneers, and
Speaker 2: she got arrested all the time for advocating that people
Speaker 2: ought to be able to control their bodies.
Speaker 3: So was this a prime like her primary partner that
Speaker 3: we're talking about.
Speaker 2: For eight years, okay, okay, and the one who kind
Speaker 2: of left the mark, like like this was the okay,
Speaker 2: Like she wrote about him as like her most passionate
Speaker 2: love affair, and so Alexander Berkman, her like more famous
Speaker 2: boyfriend who tried to kill Henry Clay Frick and like
Speaker 2: once tried to break out a prison and stuff. Berkman
Speaker 2: fucking hates Ben Rightman. Like this is one of the
Speaker 2: great shit fight in fighty things of history, is how
Speaker 2: much they hated each other. I think I Actually, I
Speaker 2: think Ben didn't give a shit about Berkman. I think
Speaker 2: Ben was just like, whatever, fucking doing my thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, you know, just it does sound like
Speaker 3: things that still happen to this day in Paul in
Speaker 3: your first situation.
Speaker 2: Totally what anarchists getting involved in polydrama? No, go on,
Speaker 2: It goes back a long way.
Speaker 3: It's a rich history, a rich tradition, you can see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, That's why we're doing this is to stay
Speaker 2: true to our roots. Oh yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: roots to this that okay. Anyway, So Emma Goldman spent
Speaker 2: decades traveling back and forth across the US advocating for workers' rights, anarchism, feminism,
Speaker 2: free love, and all the cool stuff. At least eight
Speaker 2: of the years that she did that, it was her
Speaker 2: boyfriend Ben who organized those talks, handling the booking and
Speaker 2: the pr And he also got arrested multiple times for
Speaker 2: advocating that people ought to be able to control their
Speaker 2: bodies and advocating birth control. He served the longest sentence
Speaker 2: in US history for advocating for birth control. Wow, he
Speaker 2: served six months okay for speech, you know. And there's
Speaker 2: a third thing he could be famous for is that
Speaker 2: there's a Martin Scorsese film based on one of his books,
Speaker 2: which was he wrote a fake autobiography called Sister of
Speaker 2: the Road that's like about the life on the rails,
Speaker 2: and it was like, the protagonist is named Boxcar Bertha.
Speaker 2: And so in nineteen seventy two, Martin Scorsese makes a
Speaker 2: movie called Boxcar Bertha based on Sister of the Road.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: So he grew up in Chicago. Just to zoom back
Speaker 2: to his beginning of his life. His life is not easy.
Speaker 2: His first arrest comes early, as shit, he's caught stealing
Speaker 2: coal from train cars. I think he's not even ten
Speaker 2: when this happens. By twelve, he's out on the rails
Speaker 2: as a tramp. That's the one every now and then
Speaker 2: people even back then were like King of the Hobo
Speaker 2: is my ass. You're a tramp, not a hobo.
Speaker 3: You know there it is gatekeeping, uh huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But unlike half the doctors of the nineteenth and
Speaker 2: twentieth century that people like talk about, right, he actually
Speaker 2: went to medical school. He actually has a degree.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: At one point I didn't put this in the script,
Speaker 2: but Berkman was like, fuck this guy, the other boyfriend,
Speaker 2: and he like wrote to the university to like double
Speaker 2: check that he had gotten a degree.
Speaker 3: Oh so Patty, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then never forgave him for doing this.
Speaker 3: Oh so he found out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't, uh, I bet you. Alexander bergman like
Speaker 2: told him, but like I was looking into you. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm on to you.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: But when he was twenty one years old the year
Speaker 2: nineteen one hundred, he started at the College of Physicians
Speaker 2: and Surgeons in Chicago. By nineteen oh four he graduated,
Speaker 2: and he just becomes a like a free doctor being
Speaker 2: cool as fuck. He offers services to sex workers and
Speaker 2: hoboes and the poor and whoever needs it. And he
Speaker 2: is primarily an STI doctor. He treats like syphilism all
Speaker 2: this stuff, right, and his like whole thing is fighting
Speaker 2: venereal disease. His other whole thing is he illegally performs abortions,
Speaker 2: which is cool and you know, and he becomes a
Speaker 2: pioneer in the field of venereal disease like treatment. He
Speaker 2: goes on to spend his later life developing public health
Speaker 2: around STIs and stuff like that, which is you know,
Speaker 2: kind of putting his money where his mouth is right. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 2: But most of the time he's not like the most
Speaker 2: when he's younger, he's not the most committed doctor. He
Speaker 2: does it when he needs money or when people need help.
Speaker 2: You know, he works when he has to. He spends
Speaker 2: as much of his time as he can bumming around
Speaker 2: the country. He throws down at protests. He falls in
Speaker 2: love with new people constantly, sometimes he doesn't always fall
Speaker 2: in love with them. Mostly women, but not exclusively women.
Speaker 2: And he's horny as fuck. He's part of a culture
Speaker 2: that espouses free love. He respects the shit out of women,
Speaker 2: and he kind of goes back and forth across the
Speaker 2: line between being a fuck boy to being a happy
Speaker 2: and respectful queer slut. One of his many daughters, I know,
Speaker 2: I know the road. We are all sports to walk,
Speaker 2: and but he like, I don't know whatever. It's so
Speaker 2: fascinating me. I changed my mind about how I felt
Speaker 2: about him like three or four times while writing this.
Speaker 2: But you know what, I've never changed my mind about
Speaker 2: what's that? Actually I did. I specifically changed my mind
Speaker 2: when I was like twenty, I would have hated the
Speaker 2: fact that I had a radical history podcast with ads
Speaker 2: in it. But I'm forty and my dog needs food, so.
Speaker 3: Hey, you and me both, Yeah, exactly. Sophie and I
Speaker 3: talked a lot about this when we met in a bar.
Speaker 3: We did, yeah, big conversation, so I guess roll them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck it, here's the Mads and we are back
Speaker 2: and we are talking about our guy. One of his
Speaker 2: many daughters wrote a biography discussing him and his behavior.
Speaker 2: How he is is this?
Speaker 3: Is this?
Speaker 1: Is this the part? Is this the part? I'm waiting Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for it.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so there's not like he was not present
Speaker 2: in his kids' lives and he was not always like
Speaker 2: telling everyone what was going on. But see, see there's
Speaker 2: not like he's not a monster.
Speaker 1: Okay, because we've definitely like there was. There was one time,
Speaker 1: Chelsea where Margaret did an entire episode and then she
Speaker 1: gets to like the fifth book she's read about this
Speaker 1: one person, and there's like two sentences at the end
Speaker 1: it's like, by the way, he was a fucking super
Speaker 1: villain to his family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that is very common. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no heroes, no villains.
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying I'm not getting the two sentence
Speaker 1: thing that makes me not care about anything else.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: He was not present in his kids' lives. However, that
Speaker 2: seems to even that seems to be complicated, like the
Speaker 2: the daughter who wrote the biography of No Wait one
Speaker 2: of the others, a bunch of his daughters wrote books.
Speaker 2: One of his daughters who was talked about how he
Speaker 2: wasn't present in her life. Her mom had basically been like, yo,
Speaker 2: I want to have kids and I don't want to
Speaker 2: get married, so you're gonna fuck me or what you know,
Speaker 2: and like and he basically sperm downered, right, and so
Speaker 2: like that one, I'm like, well, I got nothing against
Speaker 2: his decision. That was like the mother's choice, right, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he.
Speaker 2: I think that he also like was a shitty dad.
Speaker 3: He was a man in the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although there's gonna.
Speaker 3: Be not everything is avoidable, I guess not. I don't
Speaker 3: want to sound apologistic, but you know, it's like it
Speaker 3: was really great. The early nineteen hundreds for men was
Speaker 3: also just like this huge like masculine revolution where Teddy
Speaker 3: Roosevelt and everybody were just like pushing this just extreme, ridiculous,
Speaker 3: cartoonish masculinity. So I feel like, you know those people
Speaker 3: that resisted that is like, yeah, I had a given props.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, And this guy like, I mean, you've
Speaker 2: he gen you andly loved women and respected them. He
Speaker 2: was constantly like he the main thing he did with
Speaker 2: his career was live in the shadow of a woman
Speaker 2: ten years older than him who is not conventionally attractive,
Speaker 2: like you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But later in life he becomes a he's was organizing
Speaker 2: him for public health. He becomes a huge condom guy.
Speaker 2: He talks all the time about how great condoms are.
Speaker 2: That quote the sex urge cannot be controlled, and that
Speaker 2: quote a time will come when condoms will be on
Speaker 2: exhibit in high schools and yeah, and that we must
Speaker 2: make sex safe and fool proof.
Speaker 3: But god, yeah, that's that's an early adopter for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was reading I'm really into the Donner Party. It's
Speaker 3: one of my weird interests in just like reading about
Speaker 3: the f friends of the party.
Speaker 2: No again, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yes, yeah, Abe Blanket almost went on the
Speaker 3: Donner Party. That's my fact for al. I want to
Speaker 3: spread it far and wide. But yeah, condoms were ma
Speaker 3: out of like a just like sheep membrane and just
Speaker 3: like I'm curious what they Yeah, do you know what
Speaker 3: the condoms he was talking about were made out of?
Speaker 3: Like latex was far off right?
Speaker 2: No, no, I think, oh god, I've looked this up before.
Speaker 2: I think that the rubber condom. Hold on, Oh no,
Speaker 2: I totally didn't go run and look that up. I
Speaker 2: totally knew that the volcanization of rubber happened in the
Speaker 2: mid nineteenth century, and one of the first things they
Speaker 2: did with it was make condoms.
Speaker 3: Well God blessom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember when they like started making like
Speaker 2: forms instead of like individ whatever. Anyway, but yeah, no,
Speaker 2: but he's still like I mean, he he's getting arrested
Speaker 2: talking about birth control. He like takes it seriously. He's
Speaker 2: a venereal to see his doctor, like you know, but
Speaker 2: all that comes later is condom. Well I don't know
Speaker 2: best condom use, but his condom advocacy, you know. For now,
Speaker 2: he's a hobo doctor in his twenties. He is fucking
Speaker 2: his way across the country. And in the winter of
Speaker 2: nineteen oh seven nineteen oh eight, there's this upsurgeon on
Speaker 2: employment and labor organizing, which of course is going to
Speaker 2: be totally unfamiliar to a listener today. Those two things
Speaker 2: don't go hand in hand at any time. About and
Speaker 2: Ben Rightman started organizing hobos, and this is before he
Speaker 2: actually never formally joined the IWW. He led a march
Speaker 2: of unemployed men to Chicago City Hall and he's like
Speaker 2: fighting for the rights of unemployed people and transient folks.
Speaker 2: He's throwing fundraising dinners and shit. He's like super charming,
Speaker 2: right and even though he's this poor Jewish kid, he's
Speaker 2: like always like figuring out how to get the upper
Speaker 2: classes to take to like put their money where their
Speaker 2: mouth is by taking care of you know, working class
Speaker 2: and stuff. He gets involved in a larger hobo organization,
Speaker 2: the International Brotherhood Welfare Association, which was founded they're kind
Speaker 2: of like the Wobblies are like politically organizing unemployed folks,
Speaker 2: and the IBWA is like cult not even well culturally
Speaker 2: and like taking care of organizing. And so this is
Speaker 2: founded in nineteen oh five or nineteen oh six. That's
Speaker 2: chapters all across the country. It published a street newspaper
Speaker 2: called Hobo News that was sold by street vendors. This
Speaker 2: isn't the first time that that particular like that's a
Speaker 2: very common thing these days, right is the street paper,
Speaker 2: and they mostly kick in at the end of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century. This isn't like the first one, but this
Speaker 2: is one of the first ones.
Speaker 3: Sounds kind of like a zine precursor.
Speaker 2: Oh totally, yeah, totally, and its founder was another fascinating guy,
Speaker 2: this Christian socialist named James eid Howe, the millionaire hobo,
Speaker 2: whose name was literal once again.
Speaker 1: Wait, the millionaire Hobo's that's That's not a reality TV
Speaker 1: show from twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: Nor is it the story of many Silicon Valley boys. No,
Speaker 3: I sleep on a bean bag people, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well why would well? Why would I get an apartment?
Speaker 1: They have everything for me at the Google campus.
Speaker 4: It's like, you're getting millions of dollars, buy your own sofa, chad,
Speaker 4: get your own kombucha, our capital.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this guy's like the inverse of that. I wish
Speaker 2: that all of the tech billionaires are millionaires who like
Speaker 2: think of themselves as like cool, burning man types or whatever.
Speaker 2: I wish they would do this instead cool.
Speaker 3: I'm ready to like him.
Speaker 2: He was an heir to two different wealthy Saint Louis families,
Speaker 2: Like both sides of his family come from a fuck
Speaker 2: ton of money and he just inherited a fuck ton
Speaker 2: of railroad money. But he didn't had no interest in capitalism.
Speaker 2: He studied theology, he didn't eat meat. He hated capitalism.
Speaker 2: He tried and failed to start a monastic order, but
Speaker 2: it didn't work, right, Oh I that yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2: And so then he was like, fuck it, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be a hobo and he he took all of he
Speaker 2: only spent money on himself that he actually earned doing
Speaker 2: hobo work, like going to the you know whatever. But
Speaker 2: he didn't just like sit on his trust fund. It
Speaker 2: wasn't even a trust fund. I think he just literally
Speaker 2: had the money. He formed the iwa ib Wa and
Speaker 2: he offered food and lodging and education and hangout spots
Speaker 2: for hoboes at places called hobo colleges, so all across
Speaker 2: the country you could go in and get a place
Speaker 2: to stay, free food, and there's like classes and you
Speaker 2: can just hang out and have a good time.
Speaker 3: And were these like just in different buildings or houses
Speaker 3: or do you know what? Was it like?
Speaker 2: I think he's kind of renting out the same kind
Speaker 2: of halls that like union halls are renting out okay, okay,
Speaker 2: which I think was a bigger part of culture back
Speaker 2: in the day.
Speaker 3: Like a grange. Yeah, rent out the grange here totally.
Speaker 2: But he would like rent them I think permanently, Like
Speaker 2: there would be like these now very cool, I know,
Speaker 2: I just like really like him. And then the Chicago
Speaker 2: branch was founded by his protege, Ben Reitman, and this
Speaker 2: was the largest and most successful hobo college in the
Speaker 2: country because I mean basically, because Ben Rightman is an
Speaker 2: amazing pr guy and an amazing fundraiser, an organizer and
Speaker 2: a swaggering guy who pushes dude who men hate. Like
Speaker 2: that's the people hate him, you know. The Chicago Hobo
Speaker 2: College was opened to nineteen oh eight, and it was
Speaker 2: a free university where professors from the University of Chicago
Speaker 2: and Northwestern University came and taught hobos and tramps. They
Speaker 2: had an arts program, Opera stars and famous stage actors
Speaker 2: would come and perform and also teach, and basically Ben
Speaker 2: was a master of convincing respectable standing folks to come
Speaker 2: teach and perform for anarchist hobos and wobblies. So cool, yeah,
Speaker 2: and hoboes at this time like clearly when people are
Speaker 2: using the word hobo is a pejorative, they have a
Speaker 2: lot of assumptions that they're making about people don't have housing. Right,
Speaker 2: Hoboes in this time are generally well but self educated.
Speaker 2: They're riding the rails with like tons of books. A
Speaker 2: lot of them are like basically running zen distros.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: They get all of these pamphlets from like the Wobblies
Speaker 2: and probably from the Waibwa, and like go around and
Speaker 2: literally just like stop various places and sell books and
Speaker 2: like you know, like if you want to read Marxist capital,
Speaker 2: you probably got it from a hobo at a certain
Speaker 2: point in American history. And yeah, they're being cool as shit.
Speaker 2: And why does Ben have anything to do with anything
Speaker 2: that we're talking about today with the Dill Pickle Club.
Speaker 2: Two reasons. One, the Hobo University is sometimes perceived as
Speaker 2: the precursor to the Dill Pickle Club, and people tend
Speaker 2: to forget the like radical origins of cultural institutions. So
Speaker 2: I want to give a justice that comes out of
Speaker 2: this homeless organizing. And too, Ben Wrightman's actually a really
Speaker 2: big part of the Doll Peckle Club. Okay, but I
Speaker 2: want to keep telling the story of Ben Rightman because
Speaker 2: he's fascinating and specifically how he meets him a Goldman.
Speaker 2: Another thing that happened in nineteen oh eight, besides the
Speaker 2: Hobo college getting started, is something that we don't know
Speaker 2: the truth of but has consequences for history. There was
Speaker 2: this young Jewish man. He's a broke, nineteen year old kid.
Speaker 2: He's a Russian immigrant. He I think grew up He's
Speaker 2: at least born in but I think he grew up
Speaker 2: in Russia. And he worked as an egg packer. And
Speaker 2: his name was Lazarus Aberbusch. Whi's a fucking cool name
Speaker 2: anyone named Lazarus?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's a loaded name.
Speaker 2: I know. Can you even die?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Probably not?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well spoiler, but anyway, he was probably an anarchist.
Speaker 2: The jury is out, well the jury convicted him, but
Speaker 2: well no, okay, let's just get to it.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: One day he shows up at the Chicago Police Chief
Speaker 2: of Police's house, and there's two stories about what happened
Speaker 2: he goes into the house. The official version, which I
Speaker 2: actually think is the most likely, is that Lazarus was
Speaker 2: there to do a murder on the chief of police.
Speaker 2: For that guy's brutal repression of protesters and the labor
Speaker 2: movement and anarchists. But the chief of police wins the
Speaker 2: fight and kills Lazarus, shoots him dead. The other version
Speaker 2: is that Lazarus was not an anarchist, but he was
Speaker 2: there as like a misguided attempt to get the chief
Speaker 2: of police to write a letter of good character for
Speaker 2: Lazarus to live and work outside of Chicago, because this
Speaker 2: was the Russian Empire's cultural norm is that if you
Speaker 2: want to go work somewhere else, you go to the
Speaker 2: chief of police or whatever.
Speaker 3: Huh, those are really different.
Speaker 2: I know, I know his sister holds to this one,
Speaker 2: like to the end of her days.
Speaker 3: I think she holds to the second story.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay, yeah, okay, She's like, he couldn't have afforded
Speaker 2: a gun. There's no way he would have had a gun.
Speaker 2: He wasn't an anarchist. I think it's more likely that
Speaker 2: he showed up there to do a murder. I support
Speaker 2: him either way. The police version is what's stuck, and
Speaker 2: since this is nineteen oh eight and people are fucking
Speaker 2: weird back then, they exhume his body from the grave
Speaker 2: to remove his brain to study the brain of an
Speaker 2: anarchist because they're convinced we have like abnormal growths on
Speaker 2: our brains or some shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like phrenology days. Yeah. Well, they're looking at
Speaker 3: the shape of your forehead to decide if you should live, yeah,
Speaker 3: or be part of the elite utopia. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember one of my friends was once explained to
Speaker 2: me this like blew my mind that there was a
Speaker 2: person who had to dedicate his entire life to measuring
Speaker 2: the skulls of people different races, and he knew that
Speaker 2: racism was nonsense, and he was just literally he was like,
Speaker 2: I'm the guy who up with the statistics to say
Speaker 2: that white people's brains aren't bigger. Hooray. This is totally
Speaker 2: a good use of my time.
Speaker 3: That's what he did with this one wild and precious life.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean like it needed to be God,
Speaker 2: it shouldn't have needed to be done.
Speaker 3: It shouldn't have needed to be done. But yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: But digging people up to pull out their brains actually
Speaker 2: is one against the law and two reel against Jewish
Speaker 2: religious practices. Yeah. Yeah, people got really mad. The chief
Speaker 2: of police who shot him posed in a photo with
Speaker 2: the kid's corpse as if he was a big game hunter.
Speaker 2: The only upside is that the chief of police like
Speaker 2: never emotionally recovered from it all and wound up like
Speaker 2: quitting well good. I know, yeah, but the dominoes of
Speaker 2: this is that the cops running around arresting all the
Speaker 2: anarchists in Chicago, which I mean that happening forty years
Speaker 2: earlier is why we have the made egg the May
Speaker 2: first celebration of worker holidays. But they're running around arresting
Speaker 2: all the anarchists. Gets to the bottom of this plot,
Speaker 2: even though there probably wasn't a plot, even if he
Speaker 2: was there to do a murder, it was probably just
Speaker 2: he was like, man, fuck that guy, you know. But
Speaker 2: they're like, oh shit, these like Russian born Jewish anarchists,
Speaker 2: they're the problem. When who shows up in town. But
Speaker 2: the most dangerous woman in America red Emma Emma Goldman
Speaker 2: a Russian born Jewish anarchist. So her venue is like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're not talking here, that's not happening. Our guy, Ben
Speaker 2: Reightman is like what you're talking about? She's coolest shit.
Speaker 2: It's like I found you a new place to talk.
Speaker 2: Come speak at the Hobo College. Ooh, perfect, it would be.
Speaker 2: But then the police shut down the whole event. She
Speaker 2: did not get to do a talk in Chicago that time, but.
Speaker 3: That would have been so nice. I would have loved
Speaker 3: to have been there.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, got it.
Speaker 2: There's like, it's not even like my favorite historical figure
Speaker 2: or whatever. I don't know if I have one. I
Speaker 2: can't think of anyone else I'd rather go see's talk,
Speaker 2: besides maybe Lucy Parsons, who will mention some of the
Speaker 2: quotes from later.
Speaker 3: But yeah, oh yeah, it would be a dream. At
Speaker 3: least we have some recordings of it, which is nice.
Speaker 3: Not a lot, right, we know, there's not too many
Speaker 3: recordings of her talking, but man, it is uh, it
Speaker 3: is powerful, that's for sure. I've never heard got the
Speaker 3: voice of the Leader. Oh my god, you haven't heard
Speaker 3: recordings of her? No? Oh yeah, I mean maybe there's
Speaker 3: only like one I've heard, the one where she's talking
Speaker 3: about how she appreciates FDR actually like listening to workers.
Speaker 3: I've read that one. But she also like dis is kind,
Speaker 3: she kind of disses him and yeah it's good, it's
Speaker 3: really good. But it's uh, I can hear it in
Speaker 3: my head, right.
Speaker 2: Now that's fucking cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look it up everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So she can't talk in Chicago, but Ben Rightman
Speaker 2: is now intrigued, so he goes to Minneapolis to see
Speaker 2: her talk and he just like falls madly in love.
Speaker 2: He sees her on stage and is like, there's the
Speaker 2: girl from There's one of the many girls for me.
Speaker 2: She's ten years older than him, She's thirty nine, he's
Speaker 2: twenty nine. And he basically like goes and runs her
Speaker 2: merch table during the talk without even like chucking. He's
Speaker 2: just like, ah, shit, how do I get involved?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: He goes and runs her the book table, you know.
Speaker 3: And yunsung heroes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And he's just the scene guy, like I
Speaker 2: love that. This is an episode it's about men, but
Speaker 2: it's about man who live in women's shadows and that
Speaker 2: do stuff, you know. Yeah, And and it meets her
Speaker 2: and she falls for him too. He becomes her manager
Speaker 2: for eight years, and one of the reasons she falls
Speaker 2: in love is this man can fuck okay. Emma Goldman
Speaker 2: wrote of the first time they fucked, quote that night,
Speaker 2: I was caught in the torrent of elemental passion. I
Speaker 2: had never dreamed any man could rouse in me, I
Speaker 2: responded shamelessly to its primitive call. It's naked beauty, it's
Speaker 2: ecstatic joy.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. This is from her books memoirs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: Oh well, let's just say good for him. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: well let's tell me we're looking him up. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: want to look at.
Speaker 1: Him, right, totally young, Ben Right.
Speaker 3: That was good, Sophie, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: All right, Ben rightman as hot as hell?
Speaker 3: Oh oh yeah, okay, mm hmm he's got the mustache.
Speaker 2: Look, he's kind of got like a Zappa vibe.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm mm hmmm, I see an ascot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then like good later, Ben rightman, you know what,
Speaker 2: he has earned his reputation and people, I'm sure still
Speaker 2: completely into him. Yeah. She described him as a handsome brute.
Speaker 3: That's what you want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the kind of energy that is putting out. And
Speaker 2: he is an amazing booking agent and he changed him
Speaker 2: Goldman's life. She goes from speaking to whatever local cliqu
Speaker 2: of anarchist is in any given town just selling out
Speaker 2: halls of thousands. She gets, he gets the middle class
Speaker 2: to show up to see her too, and he hands
Speaker 2: sells radical books at the events, saying quote we sold
Speaker 2: more books and works of literature than any two propagandists
Speaker 2: in the United States. The publisher of Whitman's Leaves of
Speaker 2: Grass told us that for several years, Emma was his
Speaker 2: best customer, and her pamphlets are selling like fifty thousand copies,
Speaker 2: which is like, wow, that's like New York Times bestselling.
Speaker 2: That's like real easy. Yeah, yeah, that's like number one.
Speaker 3: She'd be on there. Oh yeah wow. And you know
Speaker 3: what's cool is like you were talking about the radical
Speaker 3: roots of institutions, and it's like pr itself isn't coming
Speaker 3: into play until like the nineteen twenty is real as
Speaker 3: an industry. So you know, these are some radical roots.
Speaker 3: We got propaganda, we got the anarchists come together, you
Speaker 3: get a horrifying new industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. That is one of the like sad things
Speaker 2: that comes out of all of this. It's like, and
Speaker 2: then we invent new culture and then capitalism takes it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: unrelated to that. Did you know that you could spend
Speaker 2: your money on the products and services that support this
Speaker 2: fine podcast?
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Well, it's true. In fact, here's someone who will explain
Speaker 2: to you just how to do it.
Speaker 1: I hope it's the Rigan coin people.
Speaker 2: We all hope, Hi Regan, and we're back and we're
Speaker 2: talking about Ronald Reagan, the cool person who did cool.
Speaker 1: Wait, you know, I do have to add Joni to
Speaker 1: my list of things that could be considered the equivalent
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire list that I've been making with
Speaker 1: Sarah Marshall for the last since.
Speaker 3: That's talking about the astrologer.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the astrologer Joe our girl.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, And you know, I want to tell you
Speaker 3: maybe you know this, maybe you don't. Ronnie Reagan early hitchhiker.
Speaker 3: He hitchhiked in his young life to find work. Yeah,
Speaker 3: where he was trying to work as a journalist, radio guy.
Speaker 3: I know, you know it could have gone either way
Speaker 3: with him. Yeah, and it really went either way.
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan, the wobbly is like, that's the all history
Speaker 2: that I'm.
Speaker 1: Kind of disappointed that Joni didn't make my original top
Speaker 1: ten list of things that are the equivalent of men
Speaker 1: thinking about the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear the rest of them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you'll understand how I won't.
Speaker 2: I won't understand it.
Speaker 1: I'll give it that's absolutely number one. Princess Diana, Okay
Speaker 1: is number two, Lolita. Especially that photo of Bradley Cooper
Speaker 1: reading it to his extremely young girlfriend in the park.
Speaker 3: That was weird? Was that was?
Speaker 1: That was the time? Number three, the Tutors. Number four,
Speaker 1: the post it note scene from Sex and the City.
Speaker 1: You don't know that I.
Speaker 2: Know, but I made it pretty far. I got the
Speaker 2: first three.
Speaker 1: Number five just Taylor Swift as a concept.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, I have conversations about Taylor Swift constantly,
Speaker 2: even though I just because of the people are Yeah.
Speaker 1: Number six, you'll get this one, Marie Antoinette, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: number seven, the Titanic. Number eight, that magazine cover of
Speaker 1: Jessica Simpson that gave every young girl body issues because
Speaker 1: they called her Jumbo Jessica.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think about that often.
Speaker 1: Mild Number nine, why did you drop out of Yale
Speaker 1: from Gilmore Girls?
Speaker 3: Oh nice?
Speaker 1: Twilight? And now eleven Jony.
Speaker 3: Yeah, John Quiggley, She's We did a whole episode that
Speaker 3: revolved around presidents using astrologers and Reagan. Nancy Reagan used
Speaker 3: a particular astrologer quite often, and she wrote a very
Speaker 3: wild expose.
Speaker 1: We got I think it was at least a one
Speaker 1: part from Behind the Bastards on Jony, but you did, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, yep, She's She's worth it. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep growing this list, and if you have suggestions.
Speaker 2: Strangle shirt wi was foul.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah that too, Yeah, that too. That's
Speaker 1: a good one. I also think about that ballerina that
Speaker 1: her her costume lit on fire and killed her. I
Speaker 1: think about that.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I've never heard of that.
Speaker 3: I haven't heard of that either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sophia Alexandra gave me this book that was like
Speaker 1: a like a book that had this that was like death,
Speaker 1: like like how how clothing is dangerous? And there was
Speaker 1: like a whole thing about it. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh now fear unlocked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like a spontaneous combustion level.
Speaker 1: Not that I'm doing ballet, but well not yet. Anyways,
Speaker 1: back to the podcast and less about me. But if you,
Speaker 1: if you, dear listeners, have things that you think should
Speaker 1: be on this list, you have permission to tag me
Speaker 1: on the social interwebs, but not me, Margaret.
Speaker 3: You can tag me. You can tag Chelsea.
Speaker 1: Don't know if they will see it either.
Speaker 2: I thought spontaneous human combustion is gonna be a much
Speaker 2: larger part of life. It's like what people say about
Speaker 2: like a quicksand you know, or.
Speaker 3: Like Bermuda Triangle.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Like I had an aunt who lived in
Speaker 2: Bermuda and I was like, how is she alive? For
Speaker 2: a very long time? And but yeah, span yeah, I
Speaker 2: thought spontaneous human combustion was just like because I loved
Speaker 2: these pre internet books, the like Mysteries of the Unknown
Speaker 2: from Time Life or whatever these like is a like
Speaker 2: thing where you convinced trick people into buying this like
Speaker 2: subscription to these shitty hardcover books full of nonsense.
Speaker 3: Oh, like an early subscription box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally very cool. Anyway, what might have come in
Speaker 2: them is pamphlets from Emma Goldman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but cool.
Speaker 2: At one point, Ben Rightman, so he's not even technically
Speaker 2: in the IWW we actually covered this part in a
Speaker 2: different episode at one point, but he's fighting with the
Speaker 2: Hoboes for free speech, like whenever they have a free
Speaker 2: speech fighting sometimes showing up, you know. And at one
Speaker 2: point he gets literally tarred and feathered by a right
Speaker 2: wing mob of businessmen in San Diego, which.
Speaker 3: Is like, no joke, that's hot.
Speaker 2: Tar yeah, yeah, no, uh almost.
Speaker 3: Kills you, right yeah. Ough.
Speaker 2: They actually they didn't have any feathers, so they tar
Speaker 2: and sage brushed him and then they burned the letters
Speaker 2: IWW into his like into his butt, you know, or
Speaker 2: like onto his butt. Shetran, Yeah, but well, I guess
Speaker 2: with a cigar so slowly, and he wasn't even a
Speaker 2: dues paid member. But I hope he decided he I
Speaker 2: hope they just decided he's in after that, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: And he apparently like took it, and I mean, what
Speaker 2: else are you gonna do? He would like give talks
Speaker 2: and we'll get to it. But the Dill Pickle Club,
Speaker 2: like everything's like kind of comedy, and like one of
Speaker 2: his big things when he'd give talks is he'd be like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna show you, and everyone's like, nah, don't show us.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like the scandalous thing where he's gonna show you
Speaker 2: the scars on his butt or whatever. In nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 2: while he was in prison for six months for teaching
Speaker 2: birth control, he he did all of his usual stuff.
Speaker 2: He was the prison's free doctor, like all the inmates
Speaker 2: would come to him. Right. He was also fucking just
Speaker 2: fucking his way through the prison, gluting you know the
Speaker 2: boy you would assume male prisoners. He also fucked a
Speaker 2: bunch of female prison guards. Hey, and then he also
Speaker 2: fucked female prisoners consentually. And I I don't know how
Speaker 2: he's managing this, Like is he like fucking guards to
Speaker 2: be like get permission to go fuck other people? I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess we're just spreads. Yeah, opportunities come your way. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And his quote about this when people are like, wait,
Speaker 2: you fuck dudes, he's like, quote, yes, I took my
Speaker 2: fun where I found it, and I denied myself nothing.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, iconic.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: He goes on living his life. He works as a
Speaker 2: doctor for the down trodden. He advocates public health. He
Speaker 2: is somewhat irresponsible about how he fucks. The whole thing
Speaker 2: with Emma Goldmett didn't put it in the script specifically,
Speaker 2: She's like going on tour talking about free love and
Speaker 2: the whole time he's like just like fuck a ton
Speaker 2: of people and like kind of and she's on this
Speaker 2: like like there was like this like fight in the
Speaker 2: free love thing between like sort of the spiritual and
Speaker 2: profane sex. And so there's kind of like, only fucking
Speaker 2: people that you like, romantically care about and then casual sex, right,
Speaker 2: and he's on a team casual sex and she's not,
Speaker 2: and like, and later he writes her a letter being like, hey,
Speaker 2: I've been fucking all these people, and she's like, oh no,
Speaker 2: I'm very sad. But also she sort of knew and
Speaker 2: was also fucking other people and yeah, whatever, old polydrama.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: And while it's open, the Dill Pickle Club is his
Speaker 2: home away from home, with his actual home being the rails.
Speaker 2: He died of a heart attack at sixty three, and
Speaker 2: he's buried in the same Chicago cemeteries and Ma Goldman
Speaker 2: Lucy Parsons and the Haymarket Martyrs. He supposedly rode a
Speaker 2: million miles of railroad tracks without ever having paid a
Speaker 2: single fare. Might have you know, wouldn't put it past him.
Speaker 2: He also supposedly left fifteen hundred dollars in his will
Speaker 2: to establish a drinking trust for the local bumps to
Speaker 2: drink to his memory, like, and anyone caught crying over
Speaker 2: his death into their beer was cut off from the fund.
Speaker 3: Wow yeah, wow wow, And.
Speaker 2: It seems like one of those things. Yeah, okay, wait
Speaker 2: wait you specialize in urban legends. I want to get
Speaker 2: your your sure your take on whether or not that's
Speaker 2: just an urban legend.
Speaker 3: I mean it kind of sounds like tall Tale a
Speaker 3: little bit, but it's kind of specific, so you know,
Speaker 3: it feels like maybe a little too specific to be
Speaker 3: a legend. Maybe I would say the million miles sounds
Speaker 3: more urban legendy than something as specific as creating a
Speaker 3: drinking fund and like the no crying, But I don't know,
Speaker 3: you know, that's the thing about urban legends.
Speaker 2: No, that makes sense. And I while at some other
Speaker 2: point he mentions in his writing being inspired or like,
Speaker 2: he mentions how cool it was when so and so
Speaker 2: died left behind four hundred dollars for the bumps to
Speaker 2: like and like, so that his funeral was like the
Speaker 2: best raucous fun time in whatever. So he clearly so he.
Speaker 3: Has like some consciousness already over what he wants to do. Yeah,
Speaker 3: potentially yeaheah, okay.
Speaker 2: Which is funny because.
Speaker 3: Then let's believe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's funny because the Dopeckle Club was sober
Speaker 2: and run by a tito.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's funny.
Speaker 2: But one of his daughters, Helen Reightman, was a lesbian
Speaker 2: who went on to become a prominent nudist who wrote
Speaker 2: a book in the thirties in nineteen thirty two called
Speaker 2: Ongoing Naked and founded a newdist club, as well as
Speaker 2: being a sexologist in nineteen thirties Germany, studying homosexuality and
Speaker 2: working to regularize it because nineteen twenties and thirties Germany
Speaker 2: was the front of the world for queer rights. And
Speaker 2: she also rode the rails wearing men's clothes and changed
Speaker 2: her name to Jan Gay. And I don't know whether
Speaker 2: it was a like because I'm a gay lady thing
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 3: When did gay come into common useage? Sure, because it was,
Speaker 3: like you, it was more pansy, more fairy in like
Speaker 3: the twenties and thirties.
Speaker 2: And it was the third sex before then.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah. Yeah, we just did a series on early
Speaker 3: drag queens, so I was really deep in the pansy
Speaker 3: craze and kind of the how everyone was kind of
Speaker 3: weirdly pro gay for like three years in the thirties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's cool as hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I only am about fun from an American point
Speaker 2: of view. I know more about like when it kicks in,
Speaker 2: like with the Matachine Society and stuff a little bit later, like.
Speaker 3: H totally it's good history. Yeah, check it out, guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so that's the setup about hobos and this
Speaker 2: like started with hoboes, the Dopickle Club all this stuff, right,
Speaker 2: and from there, so Chicago has this hobo culture. From
Speaker 2: there it becomes the bohemians. And again not actually people
Speaker 2: from bohemia, people who get called that or call themselves that,
Speaker 2: the counterculture and specifically the two came together in Chicago
Speaker 2: in what got called Hobohemia, which is a counterculture built
Speaker 2: on vagabonds and with wandering working class intellectuals and artists.
Speaker 2: And it's a really funny portmanteau to me because hobo
Speaker 2: might already mean homeless bohemian, right right, so it's like
Speaker 2: hobobobo or something, I don't know whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, what do they call that? A baby puppy
Speaker 3: in journalism? Kind of kind of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a baby puppy. Our hoe Bohemia in Chicago
Speaker 2: was located in an area called Tower Town, which is
Speaker 2: now called Old Chicago water Tower District. It is named
Speaker 2: after the Old Chicago water Tower. But you didn't see
Speaker 2: that coming it and its pumping station were the only
Speaker 2: buildings that survived the Great Fire of eighteen seventy one
Speaker 2: that destroyed pretty much the whole. They'd been built two
Speaker 2: years earlier, and they're like stone right, it's a really
Speaker 2: neat castle. It looks like some Lord of the Rings,
Speaker 2: like evil war fang. Shit. Eh, I've worked in Lord
Speaker 2: of the Rings, Sophie. Aren't you proud of me? Thanks?
Speaker 1: Less than an hour and you did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what matters. That's why I get paid the
Speaker 2: big buck. It actually get fired if I don't mention
Speaker 2: Lord of the Rings every episode or week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Lord of the Rings the equival of the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire for you, Magpie.
Speaker 2: Yeah probably, Yeah that in the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 1: Well you think about that like every three hours.
Speaker 2: That's true. I'm trying to figure out this episode. This
Speaker 2: episode might not tie into the Oh my god, don't worry.
Speaker 2: It's gonna tie into the Irish Revolution, the Easter risings
Speaker 2: in it. And I talked shit on Stalin. Don't worry.
Speaker 3: Oh good Yeah, thank goodness. Yeah, you're checking some of
Speaker 3: the box.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll take it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tuberculosis, that's what I think about every once a
Speaker 2: week instead of the Roman Empire consumption. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So Tower Town and where Hoe Bohemia is. It had
Speaker 2: been a rich neighborhood originally, but by the nineteen tens
Speaker 2: it's a working class neighborhood. It's the large houses are
Speaker 2: divided up into tenements, and it was a three block
Speaker 2: wide buffer between the Gold Coast, which was rich bastards
Speaker 2: on the shore to the east, and Little Hell to
Speaker 2: the west, which was a poor immigrant Italian neighborhood whose
Speaker 2: organized crime would capture the nation's attention during Prohibition. The
Speaker 2: word gentrification was not coined until nineteen sixty four, but
Speaker 2: it's a process that's been with us as long as
Speaker 2: there's been cities. The neighborhood was cheap, so artists moved
Speaker 2: there because art doesn't pay well in the capitalist society.
Speaker 2: If you want to stop gentrification, stop capitalism, because then
Speaker 2: artists can live wherever they want, or it can get
Speaker 2: paid better whatever. Anyway, Artists have to afford to eat,
Speaker 2: so they move where they can afford. Poor artists attract
Speaker 2: rich artists and wealthier people in general, and then the
Speaker 2: poor artists as well as original residents are priced out.
Speaker 2: For a little while. It was a place for free
Speaker 2: thinkers where new ideas could percolate and take hold. This
Speaker 2: whole bohemia didn't center around the water Tower itself. It
Speaker 2: centered around Washington Square Park, which they called bug House Square.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Bug House Square was where people soapboxed, which is they
Speaker 2: literally stood up on boxes to address the crowd to
Speaker 2: go on about this or that thing. Okay, this is
Speaker 2: like the opposite thing, like of like quicksand or spontaneous
Speaker 2: human combustion. Soapboxing it seemed like a like weird thing,
Speaker 2: like a weird trope that obviously probably didn't really happen.
Speaker 2: Why would someone do this? This is like, this is
Speaker 2: like the entertainment of.
Speaker 3: The Yeah, this is tweeting. Yeah, No, totally just yell
Speaker 3: your tweet yeah to the square. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it was called bug House Square because bug house
Speaker 2: was slang for crazy at the time, and it was
Speaker 2: an awfully eclectic mix of folks doing soapboxing, including anarchists, Wobbly's, communists,
Speaker 2: and folks with more unique political inclinations and ideas like
Speaker 2: whatever they've come up with. This is a time before
Speaker 2: podcasts when there was no other entertainment available. Because I
Speaker 2: think podcasts are the only form of entertainment if you've
Speaker 2: come up with it.
Speaker 3: There definitely are soapboxes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true, absolutely, Literally thousands of people would show
Speaker 2: up on the weekends to listen to and heckle dozens
Speaker 2: of soapboxers every every day. It was the best known
Speaker 2: public square for this in the country during its heyday.
Speaker 2: And the thing that's interesting to me is that this
Speaker 2: they're not like modern talking heads there. They have more
Speaker 2: in common with modern stand up comics, and like all
Speaker 2: the good podcasters, I've never done stand up comedy. I
Speaker 2: probably never will I have either, but like, clearly we
Speaker 2: try to be funny instead of just serious.
Speaker 3: I'm very funny grim.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so all kinds of views are espoused all over
Speaker 2: bug House Square, but the sort of hegemonic influence, the
Speaker 2: overall vibe, and the most speakers were the Wobbleys, the
Speaker 2: industrial workers of the world. Chicago was the crossroads of
Speaker 2: the country where East meets West. They kept calling it
Speaker 2: the Middle West, and I like don't know if that's
Speaker 2: just what they called it, or if that's just what
Speaker 2: people called it before the Midwest. I'm not sure. I've
Speaker 2: never read so many first hand accounts of the Midwest
Speaker 2: until that's particular, and so we had a lot of
Speaker 2: railroads going through it, so it had a lot of hoboes,
Speaker 2: and so that I had a lot of wobbleys and
Speaker 2: IWW was found in Chicago in nineteen oh five. I
Speaker 2: want to quote one of my favorite bug house soapboxers,
Speaker 2: Lucy Parsons, who's later a dill pickle, a pickler as
Speaker 2: they call them. Lucy Parsons was born a slave. She
Speaker 2: saw her husband hanged for running a newspaper during the
Speaker 2: Haymarket affair, which gives us may day. And this is
Speaker 2: a soapbox quote from her from a little later, but
Speaker 2: it seems to carry the vibe and I just kind
Speaker 2: of like it. It's not too far from what you'd
Speaker 2: see on Twitter before a billionaire got scared of us
Speaker 2: all and destroyed Twitter. Lucy Parsons said to a crowd,
Speaker 2: what I want is for every greasy, grimy tramp in
Speaker 2: the country to arm himself with a knife or a
Speaker 2: gun and stationing himself at the doorways of the rich,
Speaker 2: shoot or stab them as they come out.
Speaker 3: Didn't mince words. Very direct, very direct. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Fifty years earlier, she was writing pieces about why dynamite
Speaker 2: is the working class friend.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: She just pretty pretty consistent.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: I'll say there's a few other landmarks to Hobohemia. There's
Speaker 2: the Radical Bookshop, which had a bit of an uninspired name.
Speaker 2: It was called the Radical Bookshop. This was started in
Speaker 2: nineteen fourteen by what I've seen described as a disaffected
Speaker 2: preacher and his blind anarchist wife and co run by
Speaker 2: their two daughters. And basically they were like fuck off, broke,
Speaker 2: and they had a ton of books because they were
Speaker 2: both really bookish people, right, and so they were like,
Speaker 2: all right, we better turn our house into a bookshop,
Speaker 2: otherwise we're fucked.
Speaker 3: Fair enough.
Speaker 2: This lasted more than a decade, despite police harassment, and
Speaker 2: it was an inspiring place for some of the folks
Speaker 2: that laid kind of the foundations for twentieth century American poetry.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I've heard these names, but I don't.
Speaker 2: I'm not enough of a poetry person. But Kennis rex
Speaker 2: Roth and Carl Sandberg kind of got their start through
Speaker 2: all of this. The mother, her name was Lillian h Udell.
Speaker 2: She was a writer herself, and she wrote reviews of
Speaker 2: books and a biographical sketch of future friend of the
Speaker 2: pod Fltering Declaire. The other major partner in the bookshop
Speaker 2: was a socialist publisher called Charles H. Kerr, and he
Speaker 2: was another who at this point he's no longer that
Speaker 2: that's the name of the publisher, not the guy. But
Speaker 2: it was started by a guy named Charles H. Kerr,
Speaker 2: who is another Christian, socialist, vegetarian guy. And this guy's
Speaker 2: a Unitarian. His press is still around today. They published
Speaker 2: the book about the Dill Pickle Club. I believe the
Speaker 2: only book about the Dill Pickle Club. I just read it.
Speaker 2: I think you think I know what it was called.
Speaker 2: It's probably called the Dill Pickle Club. If anyone's trying
Speaker 2: to google this, there's one l in Dill pickle because
Speaker 2: I think they got like sued over that was like
Speaker 2: trademark problems when they tried to use two wells and
Speaker 2: they're like whatever, we don't care. Every Sunday, the Udells
Speaker 2: had discussions in their bookshop sort of an indoor bug
Speaker 2: house square. Before too long they realized they needed a
Speaker 2: real indoor bug house square, a cafe for all comers
Speaker 2: to discuss ideas and collectively and democratically form new ways
Speaker 2: of thinking, being and living. They needed a Dill Pickle club,
Speaker 2: which will talk talk about on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Mmm, I'm so excited. Wow, this has been a
Speaker 3: really cool journey so far. Thanks, like a real American tale.
Speaker 2: I say, right, very okay, but what's your uh both
Speaker 2: of you, what's your what's your takeaway on Ben rightman?
Speaker 3: The man can fuck? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It sounds like he was put his money where his
Speaker 3: mouth was and you know, lived kind of a weird
Speaker 3: dual life as like a dog because he was the doctor. Yeah,
Speaker 3: a doctor. I don't know. It's like a very very
Speaker 3: cool story and anyone connected Emma Goldman I want to
Speaker 3: know about. So this is definitely a very cool story.
Speaker 3: And I don't I'm I don't know where it's going
Speaker 3: to go. I have no idea.
Speaker 2: Well it's going to go to Wednesday. But first, where
Speaker 2: can people hear you or at you on social media
Speaker 2: when they have ideas about what they think about every week?
Speaker 2: That isn't the Roman Empire?
Speaker 3: Great? Yeah? American Hysteria is my podcast and we cover
Speaker 3: moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, and hoaxes as well
Speaker 3: as crazes throughout American history and we kind of trace
Speaker 3: them back to their roots kind of not unlike your show,
Speaker 3: and try to uncover some hidden history that illuminates the
Speaker 3: present day. So you can find that anywhere. You can
Speaker 3: find me mostly on Instagram at American Hysteria Podcast. I'm
Speaker 3: not doing Twitter anymore. I've officially decided Twitter's gone. No,
Speaker 3: I'll be in the town square.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that people who like this podcast might
Speaker 2: like your podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm saying it. Okay, I'm going to say it right. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 3: what do I have to plug? I once had a
Speaker 3: satanic panic after me. That's what I'm going to try
Speaker 3: and say to impress you.
Speaker 2: Instead, you had one after me. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 2: satanic planic for my band. When I lived in Ashville,
Speaker 2: North Carolina. There's this local right wing news quote unquote
Speaker 2: news journalist who actually had a pretty large following, was
Speaker 2: a Facebook guy called a Skyline News, and he like
Speaker 2: was like convinced about antifoe, which, murder, baby whatever.
Speaker 3: All the keywords. Yes, Okay.
Speaker 2: He found my music video and was like what and
Speaker 2: so we just printed pieces of it onto our band
Speaker 2: shirts after that and just.
Speaker 3: H well, that's what you definitely do. You got to
Speaker 3: work that in. Yeah, well that does impress means I
Speaker 3: am impressed as my goal.
Speaker 2: So if you want to follow me, I'm still on
Speaker 2: Instagram at Murder at Kiljoy, and I'm on Substack now
Speaker 2: where I write a bunch every week because that's the
Speaker 2: thing that I can't stop doing. I mean, because I
Speaker 2: have new and insightful things that you should totally check out.
Speaker 2: Uh And and also I want to shout out sad Oligarch,
Speaker 2: which I just finished listening to, because you think I wait,
Speaker 2: I always wait until everything's like if it's like a
Speaker 2: limited run.
Speaker 1: You binge it, you binge it totally? Yeah, what'd you think?
Speaker 2: That's fucking great? If you like this, you'll like sad
Speaker 2: Oligarch Jake Hanrahan talking about basically skirting around outright saying
Speaker 2: that Putin is killing all these oligarchs to consolidate power
Speaker 2: in Russia. And it's good, it's entertaining and as it's
Speaker 2: also kind of dark, but that's what I got to plug.
Speaker 2: Go listen to sad Oligarch, Sophie Cool, what do you got?
Speaker 1: I want to plug the good folks at Border Kindness.
Speaker 1: If you're not following them ontocial media, then you should be.
Speaker 1: And if you are able to donate, that would be awesome.
Speaker 1: They're doing really good work. And listen to the couple
Speaker 1: of episodes that our video and James Stout has done
Speaker 1: on what's going on at the Border on it.
Speaker 2: Could happen here yep, and see y'all Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Ye by Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check
Speaker 1: us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.